GOVERNMENT MOVES TO DEPORT PHILADELPHIA MAN FOR SERVICE AS NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD

WASHINGTON, D.C.-The Department of Justice has asked a federal
immigration court in Philadelphia to deport a Drexel Hill, Pa., man on the
basis that he participated in the persecution of civilians during World War II
while serving as an armed guard at two concentration camps in Germany and one
in Nazi-occupied Poland. Today's deportation request follows a July 2000
decision by the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to revoke the defendant's
U.S. citizenship based on his Nazi service in SS Death's Head guard units,
which the Court ruled constituted "participation in the Third Reich's closed
culture of murder."

A charging document filed yesterday in United States Immigration Court in
Philadelphia, by the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) of the Justice
Department's Criminal Division and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service, states that Theodor Szehinskyj, 76, a retired machinist, should be
deported based on his service as an armed SS guard of civilian prisoners at
the Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen and Warsaw Concentration Camps.

The charging document states that in January 1943, Szehinskyj began serving in
the SS Death's Head Guard Battalion at Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp. The
charging document further states that in May 1943, Szehinskyj was transferred
to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. According to the charging document, from
September 1943 to May 1944 Szehinskyj also served as a guard in the SS Death's
Head guard unit at Warsaw Concentration Camp, constructed at the site of the
leveled Warsaw Ghetto in Poland. The charging document adds that from May 1944
to February 1945, Szehinskyj again served as a member of the SS Death's Head
Guard Battalion at Sachsenhausen. The Government further alleges that the
thousands of prisoners at each of these concentration camps were subjected to
persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, or political
opinion, and that Szehinskyj was assigned to prevent prisoners from escaping.

Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, who heads the Justice
Department's Criminal Division stated, "By preventing prisoners of these Nazi
concentration camps from escaping, Szehinskyj and his fellow SS guards
participated in the Nazis' genocidal plan to annihilate the Jews of
Nazi-occupied Europe."

"This case reflects the continued commitment of the United States to remove
from our shores those who helped the Nazis carry out their reign of terror,"
said Eli M. Rosenbaum, Director of the Justice Department's Office of Special
Investigations (OSI). "Szehinskyj and the other SS Death's Head guards were
integral parts of the Nazi system of degradation, brutality and murder."

Szehinskyj is a native of Galicia which was part of pre-war Poland, but is now
in Ukraine. He entered the U.S. in 1950, using a visa obtained in Schweinfurt,
Germany, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1958.

The Szehinskyj case is a result of OSI's ongoing efforts to identify those who
assisted in Nazi persecution residing in this country. To date, 71 Nazi
persecutors have been stripped of U.S. citizenship and 57 have been removed
from the United States since OSI began operations in 1979.